History, Just For Fun: `Young Catherine,' `Brother Future'

Not all this month's new TV movies are concerned with contemporary psychopaths - two premiering Sunday are steeped in history: TNT's four-hour miniseries, ``Young Catherine,'' at 5 and 7 on cable, and PBS' ``Brother Future,'' a ``Wonderworks'' movie at 10 a.m. on KCTS-TV.

``Young Catherine'' is the kind of costume melodrama you didn't think they made anymore - but they did (at least Turner Network TV did), and it works surprisingly well, thanks to astute casting and lavish filming in the U.S.S.R.

The ``Young Catherine'' of the title eventually would become Catherine the Great, but this movie stops at the point where she becomes the Empress of the Russias and chronicles her formative years after she left her native Prussia to become engaged to the Grand Duke Peter, destined to rule Russia after the death of the Empress Elizabeth, his aunt. There were plenty of obstacles, including Catherine's scheming mother (who got herself thrown out of Russia), and the fact Empress Elizabeth was more interested in a male heir for the throne than in the future of young Catherine. The worst obstacle was Peter himself, more fascinated with playing soldier than in having marital relations.

Scriptwriter Chris Bryant and director Michael Anderson want to make all this history as entertainingly palatable as possible and the result is great fun, rather like an old M-G-M costume spectacle from that studio's heyday.

The supporting casting is fine: Vanessa Redgrave has a ball as the Empress Elizabeth, Franco Nero plays a power broker, Marthe Keller is Catherine's mother and Christopher Plummer plays the British ambassador who befriends Catherine.

The central roles are equally well-performed, beginning with Julia Ormond as Catherine, Reece Dinsdale as the nutty Grand Duke Peter and Mark Frankel as the dashing soldier who falls in love with Catherine. All three are talented British performers whose experience ranges from Shakespeare to contemporary dramas - and viewers may remember Ormond's startling performance as the drugged-out student in ``Traffik,'' the dynamite British series seen on PBS.

The second two hours of ``Young Catherine'' airs at 5 and 7 p.m. Monday, and all four hours will be repeated at 9 a.m. Feb. 21 and 11 a.m. Feb. 24.

``Brother Future,'' a special movie for Black History Month, relies on the ``back to the future'' gimmick: The contemporary hero, played by Phill Lewis, has an accident in present-day Detroit and wakes up a slave in the early part of the 19th century. While his language and ways mystify the other slaves on the plantation where he's forced to work, their lives are an eye-opener to him, and the action is built around an actual slave revolt engineered by Denmark Vesey (played by Carl Lumbly) that unfortunately was a failure.

Cable's USA channel also has a new movie, ``Tagget,'' a suspense potboiler airing at 9 tonight on cable, starring Daniel J. Travanti as a Vietnam veteran physically and mentally a wreck. He's haunted by recurring nightmares of torture in a P.O.W. camp. Suddenly he finds himself being hunted by various intelligence agencies and director Richard Heffron keeps the pace so lively, as Travanti tries to escape his pursuers, that he obviously hopes no one will notice that very little of the story makes any sense.

Experiment: Although bits of it are dated, at 8 tonight KCTS-TV is repeating the hour special, ``What's Up?'', which Gary Gibson created for Channel 9 and which aired a few weeks ago. Tonight viewers will be asked to phone an 800 number to offer comments and reactions about the show, with an eye toward making it a weekly informational series about arts and entertainment in the region. The pilot looks at everything from the Seattle Symphony to rock.

Video notes: NBC's ``Cheers'' has a bittersweetly funny Valentine's Day episode at 9 tonight on KING-TV, the kind of thoughtful, smartly written episode that helps explain why this series, after nearly a decade, still tops the Nielsens. . . . KCTS-TV airs a documentary, ``Primary Colors,'' about Corita Kent, the artist who designed the ``Love'' postage stamp design, tonight at 11. . . . Cable's AMC channel airs the ultimate in romantic movies tonight, ``Wuthering Heights,'' at 7 and midnight. . . . CBS gets nostalgic with specials showcasing ``All in the Family'' at 8 p.m. Saturday, ``The Ed Sullivan Show'' at 9 p.m. Sunday and a Mary Tyler Moore special at 9:30 p.m. Monday, all on KIRO-TV. . . . KCPQ-TV will dump Joan Rivers' talk show after the episode airing at 10 a.m. tomorrow and, starting at 10 a.m. Tuesday the time slot will be filled by NBC's ``To Tell the Truth'' at 10 a.m. and a repeat of the previous night's ''Personalities'' episode at 10:30 a.m.